A 24-year-old man was hospitalised in Guizhou province, China, after he ate too many river-snails too frequently and turned green as a result.
According to WantChinaTimes.com, he turned green because of a parasitic infection in his liver. The Chinese Center for Disease Control reportedly confirmed that he was infected by parasitic flatworms that live in animal livers.
The parasite apparently entered his body because he was eating river snails on a daily basis, news sources from the provincial capital of Guiyang reported.
“Usually I like to eat fried river snails, especially in the past few months, where I’ve been eating one plate every night,” he told local Chinese reporters.
He began complaining of a sharp abdominal pain about two months ago, but did not seek medical attention until he started exhibiting some very strange symptoms.
His skin and the whites of his eyes started to turn green.
Worried, he visited several hospitals in Zhejiang province but failed to be diagnosed correctly until he admitted himself into Guizhou Aerospace Hospital in Guizhou.
Problems with the liver can cause a person’s skin to turn green as bilirubin (a yellow pigment) builds up in the body. According to WantChinaTimes.com, symptons of the liver flukes include listlessness, poor appetite, abdominal pain and cholestasis, which is a condition where bile cannot flow from the liver to the duodenum.
“I was scared of my own reflection, I looked like The Incredible Hulk,” the young man told Guiyang Evening News.
Doctors finally removed four common liver fluke (also known as fasciola hepatica) from his common bile duct. Doctors said that the four parasites were each about 10mm long, 8mm wide and 2mm thick.
According to online medical sites, the parasite lives in liver tissues for up to six weeks, before eventually finding its way to the bile duct. There, it matures and begins to produce eggs.
Source: asiaone
